Preliminary votes and comments are in – nearly two-thirds of our 46 respondents as of April 10 prefer Powerpoint format to PDFs, and a small minority is using annotatable PDF format, though several didn’t even know it exists. (Adobe, are you listening? Some work to do here.) Key themes in comments from AR and analysts:Continue reading “PPT Wins Poll on Analysts’ Preferred Soft Copy Briefing Formats”
Author Archives: Merv Adrian
Kognitio Targets US Market, Bags Award
Kognitio, a UK-based player, has set its sights (and funded some moves) on the US market with its WX2 data warehouse offerings and is beginning to gain some traction here. If you’ve been around a while, you may remember White Cross, an appliance vendor before they were called that – it’s not much of a stretchContinue reading “Kognitio Targets US Market, Bags Award”
MAC Address Filter: A Simple Step To Secure Home Networking
I’m a software guy. Not a hardware guy, or a network guy. Not since early NetWare days, when men were men and installed cards in PCs with our teeth to connect big fat cables. So when I got my first home cable modem, I didn’t think a lot about security. And when I connected itContinue reading “MAC Address Filter: A Simple Step To Secure Home Networking”
HP Support Gets it Right
We all have our horror stories about the machines we live with. And we’ve all wrestled with Windows, Google, Skype, or [your personal favorite software whipping boy here.] But sometimes, things just work right – and they should be acknowledged when they do. Hence this story – a brief happy tale about a positive experienceContinue reading “HP Support Gets it Right”
How Should AR Provide Soft Copies of Briefing Content?
I had a couple of quick exchanges today with some analyst colleagues talking about what method we like to take notes during briefings. We all have our own way of storing them, sometimes a company repository, or a personal OneNote archive. I’ve always used a folder for each vendor within which I store content that canContinue reading “How Should AR Provide Soft Copies of Briefing Content?”
SAP Needs A Clear Message For Business Objects
In late March, over 1000 people attended the SAP Insider Business Intelligence (BI) and Portals conference. Most were customers of SAP products who were not (yet) using the products SAP acquired with Business Objects. Enthusiasm was high for the demos of text and predictive analytics, event processing and more. But to carry this story to market, especially to the newContinue reading “SAP Needs A Clear Message For Business Objects”
Dataupia – Optimism for 2009
I recently had the chance to chat with John O’Brien, CTO and co-founder of MPP data warehouse appliance vendor Dataupia (pronounced like “utopia”). He was in an upbeat mood, as the company leverages the recent addition to its B round of financing secured late last year to drive business to the next level. With aContinue reading “Dataupia – Optimism for 2009”
IBM’s Optim Will Deliver Data Management Improvements in 2009
When IBM completed its acquisition of Princeton Softech in September 2007, the picture seemed bright for such relatively niche applications as test data management, data growth management and archiving. Optim filled some gaps in IBM’s portfolio and promised to grow share of wallet in the IBM customer base. But there were awkward overlaps with productsContinue reading “IBM’s Optim Will Deliver Data Management Improvements in 2009”
Analyst bloggers – strong views abound
My post about challenging issues around analyst blogging drew hundreds of hits, and many interesting comments from analysts, AR and influencer relations practitioners and others. In this note, I’ll highlight some threads from those comments, and I encourage you to review the comments themselves – and to add your own thoughts. I’ve put in linksContinue reading “Analyst bloggers – strong views abound”
Analyst Bloggers – Threat or Menace?
OK, I admit it – I stole that title idea from an old National Lampoon. But the issue is no laughing matter: what is the appropriate code of conduct when industry analysts who work for brand name companies like IDC, Gartner or Forrester have an “outside” blog or start using Twitter frequently? There have beenContinue reading “Analyst Bloggers – Threat or Menace?”